Dapper detectives not just all talk
HAVE you noticed British actor Rupert Penry-jones’ incredible skin? Ever since I’ve had the flash television I tend to notice these things. I never saw his skin as silk-like when he played a spy in Spooks, but with the HD I can get up close and personal and admire his closed pores in his role as DIC Chandler in the second series of Whitechapel, which started last night on TV One.
It must be his Anglo-indian ancestry, revealed to him on an episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, but wherever he got it from, most women would kill to have an epidermal surface as smooth as his.
DIC Chandler’s partner in crime-solving is Detective Sergeant Ray Miles, played yet again by Phil Davis.
Where would British drama be without actor and director Phil Davis, whose dial pops up in so many British television shows it’s a wonder he hasn’t been found guilty and sentenced to television death for overexposure in the first degree?
More than anyone, Davis epitomises the thespian description of a ‘‘good jobbing actor’’, but I reckon he’s better than that, possibly the male equivalent of Helen Mirren.
Usually in plod partnerships, the more youthful boy-in-blue is a generation younger and subject to borderline bullying by an older, cynical copper, who gets his kicks out of making his protege get his suit dirty and prevents him from having a decent weekend off ( Midsomer Murders, Dalziel & Pascoe, George Gently).
Not so in Whitechapel, where Chandler is senior to Miles and takes his splenetic attacks on the cuff, not to mention his collar, which in this case is a nancy boy black velvet.
They have awfully nice coats in Whitechapel that make all the chaps look like they’re back in the 1960s, which is slightly intentional because this series’ violent murderers are copy-catting the Kray twins, after rehashing Jack the Ripper last series.
If you haven’t seen Whitechapel before then you’d probably think it a bore to revisit those crime cliches. But I couldn’t care less whodunit, I’m in it for the dialogue.
The episode opens with a policemen’s award ceremony where Miles is given an award for bravery, on account of the injuries he incurred at the closure of the last series, just as Chandler nearly had the Ripper. Instead, he did the decent thing and stayed by Miles’ side, thus saving his life.
This, Miles mentions in his non acceptance-acceptance speech where he sticks the fingers to the plod establishment who’ve been scathing about Chandler and Miles letting the Ripper slip through their fingers.
He goes so far as to mention the seating arrangements, pointing out to the top brass that it hadn’t gone unnoticed that Chandler and co had been put way at the back, ‘‘so thanks, but no thanks, and now I need to catch a bus back to my table’’.
Don’t you wish you had the presence of mind and the guts to say something visceral like that when you’ve been shafted?
Anyway, Chandler is pleasantly surprised and terribly touched that gruff old Miles has said this such nice thing about him and taps him on the shoulder to say ‘‘thanks for that’’, only to be shrugged off by Miles: ‘‘It’s only a speech I made after one too many. It’s not like we’re engaged or anything’’.
Did I mention that I hate violence on television? Haven’t really got the stomach for it.
When programmes are being screened with gory minute after gory minute of violence, the recorder comes in handy.
I grab the remote and fast forward myself out of that bad movie.
No need to clutter the head with more vile acts of man’s inhumanity to man, unless it’s the news and you can’t look away from the depraved massacres going down in Syria.
Another story, but non-fiction is always, always more hideous than fiction.
In Whitechapel, the copycat Kray twins (their name always reminds me of Kaikoura and roadsides sellings of cooked crays) slash, maim and terrorise anyone that makes them even the slightest bit cross.
As Miles – whose father used to hang out with Reginald and Ronald before he mysteriously did a runner, and may now possibly mysteriously run back into the plot – says, the violence being inflicted is not your Friday night stuff.
It’s horrible, deliberate old school slashings, and the victims are too scared to say a dicky bird about what happened to them. Yes, they’ve watched too many procedurals where witness protection quickly turns sour and after a few years when you want to come in from the cold the police don’t want to know, and then you go to the media and try and make money by selling your story so you can feed your family living shiftlessly in caravan parks, but nobody will pay for your yarn because you’re a) a grasser and b) considered to be barking mad.
I sound like I’ve been in witness protection myself, but I haven’t – just cat’s protection.
But do watch Whitechapel. It’s aces, and I think Phil Davis is the bee’s knees.